Name: Puddings and Ice Cream Sauces
Ingredients: 2 cups boiling water; 1 cup sugar; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon salt; Flavoring of choice (e.g., nutmeg, vanilla, lemon, sherry, madeira, brandy)

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Puddings and Ice Cream Sauces

Ingredients

2 cups boiling water
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon salt
Flavoring of choice (e.g., nutmeg, vanilla, lemon, sherry, madeira, brandy)

Directions

Make the sauce

Mix the flour, sugar, and salt together in a bowl.
Slowly pour the boiling water into the mixture, stirring continuously.
Let the mixture boil for 10 minutes.
Add the creamed butter and your chosen flavoring.

Flavor the sauce

For lemon sauce, use 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a little grated lemon rind.
For a richer flavor, add a little nutmeg with any of the flavorings.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,209 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together506 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour: Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the boiling water.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water. Pouring the water slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed so it does not form lumps, and the sauce thickens evenly as the starch swells in the heat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, nutmeg, vanilla, sherry, brandy):

Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Apricotfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, nutmeg, vanilla, sherry, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More pudding sauce recipes

Plum 71 German 18 Plain 16 Sweet 16 Cabinet 10 Cottage 10 See all 364 →

Lemon Cake228 recipes

Lemon Ice147 recipes

Vanilla Ice Cream108 recipes

Lemon Sherbet103 recipes

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Puddings and Ice Cream Sauces